Turkey’s national flag carrier Turkish Airlines (THY) served 34.4mn passengers in the first seven months of 2016, registering a 4.4% y/y rise despite ongoing problems in the country’s tourism industry. Growth was supported by rising traffic on both domestic and international flights, the carrier said on August 16.

THY is one of the world’s fastest growing carriers. The carrier’s global market share (in ASK-available seat kilometre) increased from 0.2% in 2002 to 1.9% in 2015. THY targets to increase its global market share to 2.1% this year as it aims to transport 72.4mn passengers, up from 61.2mn in 2015.

Passengers on domestic flights increased by 5.9% y/y, while international passenger traffic increased at the weaker pace of 3.2% y/y. The slowdown comes as foreigners are cutting their visits to Turkey amid security fears after a number of terrorist attacks since the start of the year and a failed military coup on July 15.

Despite the positive passenger traffic data, THY’s shares fell 4.47% to trade at TRY5.34 as of 15:16 local time on August 16, underperforming the market with the country's benchmark BIST-100 index eding down 0.31%. THY shares lost 40.95% of their value since the end of 2015, while BIST-100 index rose 9.21%.

THY reported a net loss of TRY1.24bn (€375mn) for the first quarter of 2016, swinging from a net profit of TRY373mn a year earlier. The company’s revenue target for 2016 is $12.2bn.

Last month, Standard & Poor’s (S&P) lowered the long-term corporate credit rating on THY to 'BB-' from 'BB' with a negative outlook citing weak performance and security worries.